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It's a Bad, Bad, Bad, Bad Movie

Reader Review


Freeway

Posted by: Andy Jackson
Date Submitted: Sunday, March 28, 1999 at 14:01:35
Date Posted: Sunday, March 28, 1999 at 16:51:49

The movie stars Reese Witherspoon and Kiefer "Who am I kidding by trying to act" Sutherland. It starts off with Reese playing a 15 year old whose parents are getting carted off to jail. She decides she doesn't want to hang around the old trailer by herself and takes off in the family car. While she's driving, she listens to a radio report badly forshadowing the rest of the movie. It says that there have been a lot of freeway rapings and slayings of teenage girls. Gee, I wonder what's going to happen?

Reese's car soon breaks down, and Kiefer Sutherland stops to "help" her. There's about half an hour of pointless dialogue littered with innuendo, and all of a sudden (and with no help from logic or reason), Reese figures out that Kiefer is the "freeway killer" (just a note, the freeway never comes into the movie again; why they chose it for a title, I don't know) and shoots him in the back of the head.

Being the stupid teenager that she is, Reese walks into a diner covered in Mr. Sutherland's blood and acts surprised when she gets arrested. She's taken to a jail, and then she's taken to court. There, she finds out that Kiefer isn't "really dead," just severly injured.

Back to jail, where Reese makes a knife out of a toothbrush, kills a guard, and escapes. She decides to use her new found freedom to visit her grandmother (even though she's got cops swarming all over trying to find her, not to mention Kiefer-Sutherland-serial-killer). For some reason, she also becomes a prostitute, and some more innuendo happens.

Somewhere in here, Reese kills Kiefer again.

Cut to Kiefer Sutherland's house, where we meet his wife who kills herself when she finds out her husband is a serial killer and has no other purpose in the movie besides being dead.

Cut back to Reese, who finally gets to Grandma's house, only to find Kiefer Sutherland playing the big bad wolf right out of Little Red Riding Hood (I kid you not, he's even dressed up in Granny's nightgown). Kiefer says some innuendo-y stuff, and Reese kills him a third time by strangling him with a piano wire that just happened to be sitting there. The cops that have been chasing Reese hither and yon for murdering a guard and escaping jail show up and give her a cigarette, and they all have a good laugh (regardless of the fact that there's a dead old lady and a freaky serial killer in her clothes in the next room).

This movie was nothing more than innuendo after innuendo, and should only be watched if you're comfortable with riffing right through them.

Scene to watch for: The big bad wolf.

Best line: "You didn't have to kill me."

Things that make you go "huh?": The toothbrush knife.

Response From RinkWorks:

I hated the movie too, but not for any of the reasons you list. The movie was intended to be a black comedy and an ultra-modern version of a fairy tale (the story parallels the story of Little Red Riding Hood right from the very first, not just by the end), and in a sick sort of way, I thought it was kind of clever. I even appreciated Reese Witherspoon's half naive/half depraved character...to a point. About half way through the movie, the story abandons the characters in favor of the plot. Reese Witherspoon's starts doing things I'm not convinced she would. The conclusion of the "cutting" social commentary everything spirals towards therefore becomes forced and false. I left the movie not the least bit thoughtful about what the movie was trying to say but frustrated and distraught that its message was so ineffectively delivered. The movie's depravity and profaneness may not have been gratuitous, but it did something equally unstomachable -- it was used in the service of a failed purpose. In spite of my admiration of some of the movie's technical and creative achievements (mostly in the first half), I left it feeling betrayed and abused. I gave it my lowest rating on At-A-Glance Film Reviews. It isn't any good as a good movie, nor is it any good as a bad movie. -- Sam.

Yeah. What he said. -- Dave


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